The Spirit of the Mountain by Elrond's Library

The Garden

I felt it when the last of the First Enemy’s supporters fell, when the flame-bright spirit of Mairon became like ashes in the wind, too broken to hold a form. I awoke from my dreaming, shocked to find my little island much changed. 

The Children had come. Ragged stones rose amongst polished stele, names and memories carved into every surface. Ribbons hung from the tree branches, sigils stitched in hues of red, blue, purple, and faded black. Gold and silver and mithril gleamed, stones of every color and shape glittered in the starlight. Helmets and swords and shields lay in orderly rows, bearing crests familiar and strange. Stars abounded - four-, five-, six-, seven-, eight-pointed ones everywhere I turned.

In the center of the courtyard stood a circle of stones, clustered together. A heavy granite plinth bearing the names Finwë and Míriel stood above the rest, with Fëanáro and Ñolofinwë below them. Another for the scarred-one and all his brothers–Maedhros, Maglor, Celegorm, Caranthir, Curufin, Amras, Amrod–leaned against them haphazardly. Another stone bearing the names and Houses of the Lords of the city of Gondolin were close. Lists upon lists of the dead were carved into the stones: of Alqualondë and the Dagor Bragollach and the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and Doriath and Sirion and the War of Wrath and the Sack of Eregion and the Akallabêth and the Last Alliance and the War of the Ring. The dead lay piled on each other in ever-expanding rings around the great stone of Finwë. 

My mountain had become a memorial to the Children. They had come whilst I slept to pay homage, to remember, to say goodbye. 

My heart wept to see the names of so many of the Children lost. No handmaid of Nienna was I, but I cried for them all.

A song whispered on the wind, the familiar mournful cry of the wanderer on the beach. I found him in the ruins of the tower, and we mourned the passing of time and the fates of the Children together in song. The watcher and the repentant.

Eventually he too took the journey to the Uttermost West, and I remained, tending my garden of stone and memory until the Last Music.